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I've also wondered, 'WHO is served by such rankings'. Surely not academic staff - I can't imagine a lecturer or reader saying to themsleves, 'OK I find I'm working at institutution rank #234 but I really want to go and work at institution #5 (which happens to be 250 miles from where I live and would involve massive upheaval in my life, family etc) (and assuming institution #5 happens to have a vacancy that suits me just now) (and I will get that vacancy)'. Maybe these rankings are useful to students who have more geographical flexibiloity in where they apply. Maybe to HEFCE here in the UK or its equivalents in other countries, although surely they know the rankings anyway. Maybe to competitive VCs. ..... Anyway surely an overall ranking masks massive differences in departments. Its conceivable that institution #234 has a brilliant law department, perhaps better than the law department at #5 say, because #234 specialises in the humanities but #5 excels in the physical sciences, Just asking, who mainly uses / benefits from these rankings? Dr Hillary J. Shaw Director and Senior Research Consultant Shaw Food Solutions Newport Shropshire TF10 8QE www.fooddeserts.org -----Original Message----- From: simone tulumello <[log in to unmask]> To: CRIT-GEOG-FORUM <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Thu, 10 Mar 2016 16:17 Subject: THE, "international rankings" and the hyper-parochial academia Hi critters, I've been in this list for some time, and there's an issue that has not got a lot of attention - and I guess why. While we hve been debating a lot of privatization, corporatization (and so forth) of academia and, especially, the publishing system, I don't remember a lot of talks about the "rankings". THE has just released the European 2016 best universities ranking. Guess what, 4 out of 5 best universities are in the UK, and 6 out of 10 best. Shall we talk about the inconsitencies of such "rankings"? To make an example, my university (University of Lisbon) is not listed, while there's one of its schools (Instituto Superior Tecnico)! Roars, an Italian based group of researchers, has been making a huge work in showing how unscientific are this and other rankings (here, for example). To me, it is not surprising that UK-based organizations make rankings that would favor the UK. I am astonished by the fact that "we", the international academic community, accept such rankings as "international", just because... they are in English! Well, I'd love to hear some comments from UK-based academics... :) Best wishes, and... congrats to people in the top ten! Simone -- Simone Tulumello Post-doc research fellow, ULisboa, Instituto de Ciências Sociais Fulbright visiting scholar, University of Memphis, Department City and Regional Planning latest publications: Tulumello S. (2015), Fear and Urban Planning in Ordinary Cities: From Theory to Practice, Planning Practice & Research, 30(5), 477-496. Doi: 10.1080/02697459.2015.1025677 Seixas J., Tulumello S., Corvelo S., Drago A. (2015). Dinâmicas sociogeográficas e políticas na Área Metropolitana de LIsboa em tempos de crise e austeridade. Cadernos Metrópole, 17(34), 371-399. Doi 10.1590/2236-9996.2015-3404 webpage / blog / academia.edu / flickr / twitter